SLUICING ON
THE TURON

By John ‘Nugget’
Campbell

If you live
in Sydney and want to do a bit of fossicking at a location not too far away,
the Turon River near Sofala, NSW, is a popular destination. The quaint historic
town is well worth a visit even if you don’t find any of the elusive yellow
stuff. It can be just a day trip with an early start but an overnight camp is a
better option.

I’d been
going there for years and found gold by reworking some high level, previously
sluiced ground. It was back-breaking labour transporting the gravel down to the
Turon River and then panning it off bucket by bucket but on my last trip I was
in for a surprise.

Just before
Christmas last year I met up with an old classmate of mine, George, whom I
hadn’t seen for 25 years. As we caught up on a lost quarter of a century we
discovered we had a common interest in gold fossicking. George took me out to
his shed and showed me his aluminium gold sluice and the various tools he’d
developed to recover the gold wash, and invited me to accompany him on his next
trip. The clincher was when he showed me his recovered gold and the wedding
rings he and his wife were wearing – both made from the Turon or Sofala
District gold.

We live on opposite sides of Sydney so we
decided to meet up at Richmond and travel in George’s car together. I set out
before dawn one Sunday in March and met George at the appointed time. The trip
went really quickly as we reminisced about the old school days, planned an
upcoming class reunion and, of course, swapped stories about gold locations
where we had fossicked.

Bits & Pieces

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